The Australian Government funds both pro- and anti-alcohol research efforts

Raised in Dubbo, first on a farm and then in a city, drinking
culture was second nature for me. I started drinking at thirteen, and kept on
through university. I should hold the typical “she’ll be ‘right” attitude to
drinking that pervades Australian culture. Indeed, for the longest time, this
would be a perfectly adequate description of my attitude to alcohol.

I am not a teetotal, by any means, nor am I some holier-than-thou
health guru. However, I am a research scientist. I have an interest in alcohol,
health, and human genetics. I also have an interest in plant genomics. When I
began a job at the CSIRO, using artificial intelligence to breed better wheat
varieties, these interests collided headlong.

In 2016, the top CSIRO award was granted to a project
that made a gluten-free beer. This apparent scientific triumph had,
ironically, been spun out of a genuine and effective public health program to
make gluten-free cereal: an otherwise admirable goal that had been entirely
derailed by management, who sold out gluten-free barley to a German beer company.

I was deeply disturbed to find that research aimed at developing
new and better alcohol varieties, and generating more alcohol, received
enormous support within the CSIRO. Coming from a medical science institute it
was shocking to see how pro-alcohol research received such a grand endorsement,
and taxpayer money, from a government body. I was even more disturbed to find
that this was not considered new or even questionable behaviour.

Government scientists routinely attend conferences funded by
brewing companies under the guise of barley research, with free alcohol (and
other perks) supplied by those companies. This is actively encouraged, with
travel paid by Australian taxes. Research to improve grape-vine yield is the
subject of long-term funding, barley breeding for improved beer making is
encouraged.

Senior members of staff personally developed mechanical grape
harvesters: devices that catapulted cheap Australian wine into global markets,
and single-handedly made $2-a-bottle wine and “goon sacks” a reality. In the
face of internal opposition, these scientists spent public funds on projects
that allowed the invention box wine: an invention that has killed innumerable
people (and tastebuds), with shocking repercussions for vulnerable communities.

It remains to be seen what at-risk first nations communities,
victims of domestic violence, victims of alcohol abuse or liver cancer
sufferers, make of their tax money supporting the production of cheap alcohol.

And now, the CSIRO has just announced, with some fanfare, that it
is spending 18 million
dollars of public money to help the Wine Australia preserve
Australia’s alcohol output, develop new wine varieties, and produce “wines with unique
flavours”. Why this is a
good use of taxpayer’s money, or a worthwhile scientific pursuit, is completely
mystifying.

The CSIRO is a federal government agency. Like the Australian
Taxation Office or the Lands Council, it has a mandate to serve the people of
Australia. However, the activity of this government department stands directly
at odds with the public good.

While at the CSIRO, I repeatedly requested evidence, any
evidence, that pro-alcohol research was in the public or even economic interest
of Australians. After three years of requests, the executive produced no
evidence. Not one scientific paper, policy document, or costed estimate emerged
from the executive of our premier scientific institution. Instead, I received
back-channel responses. While many responses were positive, largely from
unsackable senior fellows or secretive junior scientists, there was a popular
suggestion that further questions on pro-alcohol research would lead to a short
career.

Eventually, the executive admitted that alcohol killed
millions of people and that there was no safe level of drinking but,
remarkably, stated that pro-alcohol research would continue at CSIRO because it
enjoyed a ‘social licence’ in Australia. Given that almost 60
per cent of Australians think the Australian government is not doing enough
to combat the effects of alcohol, and that 80
per cent think not enough is being done to reduce alcohol-related harm,
that seems a bizarre rationale.

Alcohol kills one out of every 22 Australians[i],
and causes more overdose deaths than all illegal drugs combined[ii].

Internationally, the costs are higher. Australia grows a quarter
of the world’s malting barley[iii]
and is one of the world’s top-ten wine producers. If all units of alcohol are
allocated an equal fraction of global deaths, this means that Australian barley
kills over 271,000 people[1],
and Australian wine kills around 13,900 people[2],
every year. This is the equivalent of five and a half corpses per vineyard each
year or, for farmers, one death for every eight and a half tons of malting
barley sold.

The government and people of Australia do not even have the bad
excuse of profitability for this death toll. Over 90 per cent of Australian beer
and many Australian vineyards are foreign-owned, with profits flowing directly
offshore. Just two foreign companies own 89.7 per cent of Australian beer,
another own 18 per
cent of Australian wine. British-owned Woolworths group own a further
119 predominately Australian wineries. However,
even if these industry profits are included, the alcohol trade costs each
Australian between $500-$2000 a year through ordinary bills, hospital bills,
time off work, injuries, and deaths: costs that far outweigh any benefits from
tourism or trade[iv][v].

For a scientific institution to ignore such overwhelming
scientific evidence, in favour of an unfounded statement with no empirical support,
is a stupefying decision.

While the CSIRO and Wine Australia attempt to generate more
alcohol, other government departments are, ironically, spending billions of
dollars trying to contain the downstream harm caused by this research.

Our health and justice departments, desperate to reduce the human
cost of alcohol abuse, spend billions of dollars to contain the damage of
alcohol. Social, family, community and emergency services are all overrun
trying to contain the social fallout of drinking the abundant cheap grog
developed at the CSIRO.

Incredibly,
however, the Australian government also wastes considerable amounts of tax
money in an effort to get Australians to drink more grog.

If alcohol is harming the public, which seems overwhelmingly true,
why hand out tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for pro-alcohol research and
marketing through Wine Australia and the CSIRO? In contrast, if alcohol has a
net benefit to Australia, then why does our government dedicate well over a
billion dollars of taxpayer funds to anti-alcohol initiatives through the
health department?

Even to a self-confessed bogan from Dubbo, such as me, the use of
taxpayer money to fund both pro- and anti-alcohol initiatives makes no
sense[vi]. The
inherent contradiction is painfully obvious. As such, the diversion of taxpayer
money from meaningful research into pro-alcohol funding must end.

[1] 3.3 million global alcohol deaths per annum,
multiplied by 0.343 (the fraction of all alcohol units provided by beer, p.47),
multiplied by 0.24 (the fraction of malting barley produced by Australia), for
271,000 annual deaths. With deaths assigned equally over the 2.3 million tons of malting barley Australia produces on average, this
equates to one death every 8.48 tons. This death rate is comprehensible if you
image all the beer produced by 8.5 tons of barley being gradually filtered
through human livers and kidneys. Malting barley used to make other alcohol
such as malt whiskey and sh?ch?, and the
corresponding deaths caused by these spirits, are excluded from this estimate.

[2]
3.3 million global alcohol deaths per annum, multiplied by 0.117 (the fraction
of all alcohol units provided by wine, p.47),
multiplied by 0.036 (the fraction
of global wine produced by Australia), for 13,899 annual deaths. Allocating
these deaths equally over the 135,000 hectares of vineyard in Australia
produces one death every 9.7 ha. Alternately, allocating deaths equally across
2468 vineyards equates to 5.6 deaths per year per vineyard: however, most
deaths are concentrated in the largest-volume, lowest-price producers. Fortified
wines and related spirits are excluded from this estimate.

Saul Newman

Saul Newman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at ANU College of Science. He conducts interdisciplinary research in evolutionary biology, quantitative genomics, bioinformatics, demography, and (a little) biological anthropology. Saul also currently works at the ARC Center for Excellence in Translational Photosynthesis at the Research School of Biology.

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